paragraph style organization

[phases@adobeforums.com]

I am currently working a quite a few books that have over 70 paragraph styles. OH MY ! what a long list to scroll through!

Is there a way to organize paragraph styles similar to the way you can organize layers in photoshop (using folders). A plug in perhaps? or does InDesign do this native and I just cant find it? These books have about 5 types of pages, each with main styles and exception styles... it would be very nice to have a folder for each "page type", with an "exception" folder within that folder.

If there is no feature like this, please post that as well... I will then add the idea to the Feature request forum and hope for the best.

InDesign CS
Windows XP Pro

[Bob_Levine]

If you're referring to layer sets, then no.

Bob

[Alan_Gold@adobeforums.com]

You're using all 70 styles in each book? That seems like it might be defeating one of the main purposes of using styles, which is to give you a consistent look throughout a publication.

Anyway, I don't know of any feature or plug-in that will help, but you're definitely going to want to use a good system of naming these styles. Maybe something like:
01 body
01 caption
01 subhead
01 headline
02 body
02 caption
02 subhead
02 headline
etc., where the 01s are used together and the 02s are used together, and each group of styles is based on a style in that group.
A logical system of keyboard shortcuts for the most often used styles would also be a big help.

AG

[Teddie_Krause@adobeforums.com]

Alan -

Thank you for that suggestion! I don't have 70 styles, but just yesterday I was trying to decide the easiest way to distinguish between styles for three different signs I'm designing in one document. I'm going to use your 01 and 02 system. Thanks.

TK

[mikewitherell_at_jetsetcom_dot_net]

If you tried, you could beneficially whittle that list down to far fewer styles. I agree with Alan's comment that too many styles defeats a basic principle in a publication of sameness and consistency. Less is more in terms of reading comfort and comprehension.

Mike Witherell in Washington DC

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

I have to say here that on some of the documents I work on (which can be quite technical), I would use 70+ paragraph styles (plus a lot of character styles) and it doesn't defeat any principles of consistency - rather, it is just a logical consequence of the number of different identifiable paragraphs there are in the text. Interestingly, this seems to be another area where those working on long documents (ie, FM users) hold a different view from those working on shorter documents (ie, ID users). Many FM users, for example, would be strongly of the view that if you have two overlapping character styles (eg, bold + itals), you create a third style (bold itals) and apply it just to that overlap. I'm not of that mind, however, and don't have a problem with "layered" styles.

[M_Blackburn@adobeforums.com]

I've been using the numbering prefix idea since early PageMaker though I tend to use 1.1 head, 1.2 subhead 1.3 text; 2.1 head, 2.2 subhead, etc. to further organize things by forcing each group in the list to follow the same internal order.

70 styles does seem a bit much, but sometimes it's hard to pare things down. Tabs for example are a bit of a problem, as is the natural heirarchy of certain types of documents like Financial Statements – of which I do a lot – where every line has to be differentiated but the sequence is repetitive.

I don't agree with the notion of folders for each page: call that chaos. But I do think allowing folders, and hence duplication of styles, would be helpful. i.e. you open a folder for the section of the document you're working on and it has all styles necessary for that section even if other sections of the document use any one particular style too (that style can be in both folders).

[Kalavinka@adobeforums.com]

Per Dominic's post #5 above, I have to agree that there's nothing odd at all about 70+ styles in a genuine "long doc" template graced with carefully constructed and rationally-named variations on main styles. True, since I do books with a lot of front matter, back matter, annotation, and facing-page Chinese requiring a fair number of variations in Chinese-character leading even for the same point size, maybe I've got a little more complexity than most, but, still, it's easy to get into a lot of styles and still retain a relatively serene and uncomplicated text aesthetic.

I've come up with a system quite different from any recommended so far wherein alphabetical order, numerical order and style-component codes make for a long, but easily usable list of paragraph styles. A few theoretical examples for which all the related permutations of the style live together in alphabetical / numerical order on the list:

Title 12CB 6/4 14L = 12 point centered bold title with 6 points space above, 4 points space below, 14 point leading.

Title 12CZ 12/6 14L = 12 point centered bold-italic title with 12 points space above, 6 points space below, 14 point leading

Title 20SC CB 12/6 24L -20 = 20 point small caps centered bold title with 12 points space above, 6 points space below, minus 20 tracking.

Where 10-point roman different verse quatrain lines require different spacing before or after and the 4th line of the quatrain needs different spacing depending on whether or not it's the final quatrain:

Verse 10R Initial 6/1 11L
Verse 10R Internal 0/1 11L
Verse 10R Terminal 0/6 11L
Verse 10R Terminal-multi 0/0 11L

Where 11 point roman body text may or may not need spacing afterwards depending on whether or not an outline heading comes after, may or may not want an indent at a hard page break, where justification needs to be "full" on the last line of hard page break, etc:

Body 11R First 0/0 13L
Body 11R First Postbreak 0/0 13L
Body 11R First Prebreak 0/0 13L
Body 11R Last 0/4 13L
Body 11R Last Postbreak 0/4 13L

Similar variations in amount of space after a paragraph may be required for multiple paragraphs within a single endnote, within a single footnote, etc.

Variations are required when using block-text quotes in footnotes and again in endnotes, when quoting verses inside of footnotes and again in endnotes.

So, heck yes, you're actually lucky if you cram all that into 70 paragraph styles. (Character style families can be rationally titled and organized in this same way.)

(Where I actually have to switch between a couple complementary fonts, then I just put in a font-family code as the second element in the style name. For instance Body SS... versus Body SH... represent Body text Chinese SimSun versus Body text Chinese SimHei, etc, etc.

So, anyway, I set up style families identically in Word and IDCS and (for the most part), the text seems to "place" fairly nicely without a lot of clean-up work.

Your mileage may vary with different approaches to style-setup, but, still, the automatic organizing available through the alphabet and numerical sequence make rationalizing the paragraph (and character) style list no big deal really.

Dharmamitra
Kalavinka Press